Myst in Worm (CYOA) Part 11 (Patreon)

Myst wasn't sure how to feel as he walked into the stone mausoleum that held Hero's body, on the one hand, grave robbing wasn't something he'd ever imagined himself doing, at least not outside of some ancient pharaoh's tomb, on the other, was it really grave robbing if you were intending to bring a hero back to life? He knew he should have asked permission to collect Hero's body but he also knew that sometimes it was better to beg forgiveness, especially since he only had a limited number of resurrection tubs.

"I'm not listening to a hundred million requests to bring people back to life," he muttered under his breath as he stepped over the ornate rope barrier that was supposed to keep people from touching the marble box that protected Hero's coffin.

"Move away from the coffin!" a male voice ordered from speakers in the wall.

"Sorry," Myst replied as he took another step forward then used Othala's speed boost to partially dodge a spray of containment foam as it shot out of a concealed nozzle in the ceiling. He ripped this arm free of the quickly hardening foam then stepped forward and pushed aside the marble slab sealing the stone box so he could reach in and touch the coffin resting inside.

"Step away from my friend's coffin!" Legend ordered as he stepped out of a door in the air. He blinked as he realized the man looked like a younger Johnny Depp dressed up like a gunslinger from the wild west.

Myst transferred Hero's coffin to his clone in his pocket dimension then turned to look at Legend. "Sorry, you'll get him back tomorrow, safe and sound or my name isn't Doc Holiday."

"What?!" Legend sputtered as the man vanished into thin air. He blasted the area with a low strength wide beamed 'laser' to check for strangers then stalked over and looked in the stone box, not terribly surprised to find his friend's coffin missing. "Fuck!"

"It could have been worse," Myst muttered as he changed his face and clothes back to his normal appearance.

The other Myst pulled his attention off the various tubs of glowing green liquid stacked up in the cargo container he hadn't completely unloaded and focused on the coffin he'd stolen. "It could have been Eidolon."

"Wouldn't that be a good thing?" Amy asked as she stared at the coffin. "Eidolon has a lot of powers."

"He's also liable to shoot first," Myst replied as he opened the seal on one of the resurrection tubs and pulled the lid off.

Another Myst wearing a ring and mage robes appeared. "Not to mention stealing Hero's body might have pushed him over the edge."

Amy shook her head. "You're worse than twins."

"That's because I'm basically in five places at once," Myst replied as he opened the lid of the coffin and looked at the corpse. "Let's get him into the tub then we can get back to work crafting magical items."

"Are you planning on teaching us how to make magical items?" Amy asked as the collection of Mysts picked up the coffin. She stared as they tilted the coffin and dumped Hero's corpse into the tub. "I was expecting a bit more ceremony."

"I'm not particularly religious and I'd rather not touch a corpse if I can help it," Myst replied as they set the coffin on the ground and closed it after a quick check to make sure they hadn't missed any bones.

"Besides, he won't remember this part," the Myst with the wizard’s hat offered.

The Myst with the symbiote turned to look at Amy. "As for making magical items, you need a larger reserve before you start making magical items unless you only want to store a grape in your spatial rings?"

"I don't suppose you can make mana batteries to cheat?" Amy asked hopefully.

"Not that I know of," the Myst with the magic hat admitted. "With any luck we'll find a couple of books on enchanting. I know more about enchanting from my Cultivation power than I do magic, it's a bit annoying..." he trailed off as he realized he might have a solution. "Actually, I might be able to magic a set of magical rings that would let you pull off a hive mind, that would make learning magic easier since you could focus on different things."

"That would help," Amy agreed, figuring she'd get things done a lot faster if they could split up the work.

"I'll get to work," the Myst with the hat said as he offered Amy his hand. "Shall we?"

"Lets," Amy replied as she grabbed his hand and headed back towards the hotel to work on learning magic.

"I'll pick up some rings," the Myst with the Symbiote said then vanished and reappeared in one of Coil's construction sites where his other clone was grabbing scrap metal so John could create a replicator.

The other Myst shrugged then followed Myst and Amy, figuring he might as well start working on increasing his ki so that he could create better inventory rings.

0o0o0

“This is a lot of paperwork for signing up as an independent,” John noted as his symbiote shifted into a judge’s robes and he took a close look at the legalese. 

“I thought you were signing up as a ward,” Miss Militia said, looking at the paperwork packet she’d handed him. “Your parents were already consulted.”

“I am an independent minor,” John said, not looking up as he crossed out sections of the contract and made notes in the margins, “their opinion doesn’t matter and I requested the paperwork to sign up as an independent.”

Miss Militia frowned. “I’m not sure that’s possible considering your age, and we still have a lot of testing to go before that’s even authorized.”

“Well, then I suppose we should get started on that testing while you see to the paperwork I need and get that straightened out,” John said, “because the way this contract for the wards is written is completely unacceptable.” He pushed the heavily annotated packet of papers back to her.

Her eyes narrowed, not pleased with his tone or attitude. Hopefully he wouldn’t be another problem when he joined the wards, they had enough problem children already in her opinion.

“Yes, let’s get you to power testing while I check with legal,” she replied, signaling for one of the guards to lead him to the appropriate dept.

“Cask?” John asked, surprised. “Weren’t you on night shift?”

“I’m pulling a double,” the sergeant replied and waved for him to follow.

John stood up, his symbiote changing into a pair of black and grey military fatigues. “Sucks to be you,” he said bluntly. “Want to stop for coffee enroute?”

“I’ll get some after I drop you off,” Cask replied amused as she led him down the hall to the elevator. “Didn’t you pull a double last night as well or do we consider that a triple?”

John chuckled. “I’m young enough that I can substitute sex for sleep.” He entered the elevator behind her.

“Another thing to have the techs test you for,” Cask said, “because I’m fairly sure it doesn’t work that way.”

“It did before I got powers,” he replied with a shrug.

The elevator doors opened and they stepped out into a lab overlooking a large room where Missy was currently dodging a series of energy blasts with ease.

“Huh, haven’t seen her do that before,” Cask noted, “usually she simply twists space around to make them strike the floor.”

“Her powers interacted with mine,” John lied, “hence the retest.”

“We’re looking at a significant increase in her mover rating as well as additional brute ratings and possibly thinker as well,” one of the techs said to another as they looked down into the room. “Any thoughts?”

“I think I would hate to get on her bad side,” the other tech replied as Missy ripped a pipe out of the wall and flung it with pinpoint accuracy to destroy a turret. “I also think we are going to have to increase our budget to deal with the damage she’s doing to the testing equipment. Thankfully I doubt we’ll have to deal with another high level parahuman with such destructive capabilities any time soon.”

“And I believe that’s my cue,” John said cheerfully.

0o0o0o0o0

“Alright I have a basic idea of what the religious duties should be and how Tyrion Lannister should be honored,” John told Myst. “Here let me give you what I’ve got so far so you can spread it to your people as a priest of the faith.”

"Tyrion Lannister?" Myst asked, slightly distracted by the sight of Vicky cannonballing into the pool from several stories up. Thankfully they were lounging under a beach umbrella some distance from the pool itself. He gestured and the pool regained the water it had just lost as the rest of the girls in the pool decided to drown Vicky.

“I wanted a god who wasn’t a complete prick,” John replied, “and he was on the top of the list.”

"Probably better than a version of Loki, there's always that chance he'd screw you over because it's funny or because you needed to learn something," Myst mused.

“Yeah, I prefer a more down to earth god and the self proclaimed god of Wine and Tits is about as down to earth as you can get,” John agreed, “I’ve upgraded it a bit to the god of Good Times of course, because I didn’t want to limit him.”

"Sounds reasonable," Myst agreed. "Probably more reasonable than a lady of magic and free love. I don't have a decent way to hand out magic to the entire world yet and Game of Thrones has a lot of followers so it's probably easier even if most of the people won't really believe."

John reached over and tapped Myst on the forehead, imparting on him the basic religious practices for the faith. “And I anoint thee as a priest of the faith, gaining all the metaphysical benefits that come with it. Mainly good looks, immunity to STD’s and inability to get a hangover for now, that’ll change as the religion grows.”

Myst glanced over the list. "Yeah, I can live with that, long live the god of Good Times."

“Bless, the lion among the sheep,” John agreed cheerfully.

"Yeah, that's still weird," Myst muttered. "At least he doesn't expect an exceptional amount of devotion."

“He expects you to have fun and spread it around,” John agreed, “hard to go wrong there.”

"Yeah, pretty much," Myst agreed. "Speaking of happy fun times and pain and suffering, did you want magic and cultivation?"

“Of course,” John replied, knowing that Myst was waiting for him to ask about the pain and suffering and deciding not to, just to be contrary. If giving him those abilities caused him a massive amount of pain he’d simply deal with it… probably by having his other body which was currently relaxing in bed, scream into a pillow while he pretended he was fine.

Myst focused and activated John's magic, causing an aura of flames to surround John for a couple of seconds before flickering and dying out. "That's magic, now for the annoying bit." He reached out and poked several points on John's chest and arms then frowned slightly as John barely reacted. "Huh, maybe I'm getting better."

“Or since my symbiote is connected to all the feel good drugs the body can produce it is simply overriding the pain I’d feel,” John replied, feeling rather hungry at the moment. “Since it’s your dimensional pocket, how about a feast of fast food for breakfast? I like Taco Bell.”

"Sure," Myst replied as he conjured a bag of tacos on the table and a box of mexi fries for himself. "We're working through the arcane library, we should have everything scanned into the computer in a week or two."

“Pass me the spells as you get them,” John said, “I’d rather learn them second hand for now.”

"That's fine, I'm planning on handing out the basics before letting everyone experiment," Myst said.

“We can probably hold off on passing them to my clones as well, since they are currently trying to recreate cities from famous movies, or rather they are having me do so,” John said. “Thankfully since I’m basically the god of my dimensional pocket… it’s insanely easy. I’m not even sure physical laws are stable unless I will them to be.”  

"Hmm, I might need to start creating cities or at least a town, I just have a couple of buildings, mostly a movie theater and a hotel."

“I have Brockton Bay, but less dingy, and the girls are currently arguing over which cities from their favorite movies would be the best,” John said with a shrug. “Remaking Brockton Bay was easy, since we are there in person; barely had to visualize it.”

"I've been working on other things, mostly capturing villains and trying to get all of the magic sorted though I like the tower hotel I created for Lisa," Myst mused.

"I want a massive tree house on a tropical island," one of the Vicky clones said as she floated over and stole several of his mexi fries, “which probably means the other mes will too, but if the one tree is big enough I doubt you’ll need to make more than one.”

"Works for me," Myst replied. "I might need to track down some cute receptionists to copy."

"Would it kill you to hire some cute guys?" Vicky asked.

"Probably," Myst lied and grinned at her.

“Myst’s kink is lesbians, lots of lesbians,” John said, “be glad he’s providing the few males he has so far, normally he’d have restricted you all to a seafood diet by now.” 

"I don't have a problem with bisexual girls and honestly there are a decent number of male capes around," Myst replied as he grabbed a handful of mexi fries, the box refilling with a thought.

“You have about a one to four ratio?” John asked, looking around. “Yeah, that’s better than you usually do, which is more one to a hundred or more.”

"That's hardly my fault," Myst defended himself, "Chris, Leet and Uber decided they didn't want to have extra copies to keep the ratio up which means I'll have to find some more heroes or something."

“One to four is fine,” John said, “I was just pointing out that usually you skew the numbers a lot more than that. One to four is about perfect as far as I am concerned.”

"I've been trying," Myst said as he glanced over at where one of his Armsmasters was working with Aisha and Leet on a project.

“With the material you’ve delivered to my pocket your copies of the replicator and the rest should be ready in a few hours,” John noted.

"Cool, I want to replicate some laptops for everyone and we should probably make a couple of copies of my security bot and did you want to replicate the guns or did you want me to?" Myst asked, hoping he'd deal with it.

“Be faster if you did it,” John replied, “the sarcophagus is kinda time intensive to copy.”

"Fair point," Myst admitted. "Hero should be revived by midday tomorrow."

"Hero?" Vicky asked in surprise.

"I swear I told you I was bringing him back," Myst replied.

"Must have been one of the other Vickys. Can you bring back Fleur?" Vicky asked hopefully.

“She’s on my list,” John offered. “I have to wait until I have a little more done, but I should have it done before monday.”

"You're the best!" Vicky said as she flew over and hugged John.

"I see how it is," Myst joked as he enjoyed the view of her ass.

“Yes, I am the best and you are two or lower,” John agreed cheerfully.

"I'll take it," Myst replied with a snicker. 

“I have six Vickys including the original,” John said, “and yet I am still tempted to keep you because you are awesome.”

“Of course,” Vicky agreed, as if it was her due, before stealing some more fries and flying off to tell the girls.

Myst refilled his box of fries. "I'll be talking to the Travelers tonight, did you want clones of any of them?"

John shook his head. "No, you'd need the full set and no thanks. I'll have enough trouble taking care of the PRT, Merchants, New Wave and the Bitches three."

"What are you going to do with the PRT?" Myst asked.

"I'm going to make clones," John replied, “just like with New Wave. They have useful members and none we need to replace with more reasonable copies… that I can’t mindfuck into being better people anyway.”

"Fair enough, did you want to copy Squealer before you kill her?" Myst asked.

"Nope, dead," John said firmly. “None of those bastards have any power that would make it worth touching them, even with gloves and a long pole.” 

"Fair enough," Myst admitted as he realized John obviously had some mental baggage over his trigger. 'It's not like Leet can't cover her specialty anyways.'

“Want to go catch a movie while our other selves are working?” John asked with a grin, mentally calling himself a bastard even though he knew it would help relax them all.

"Sounds good," Myst said as he headed for the theater, figuring some of the girls could probably use a break.

0o0o0

Trickster snorted as he studied the man in his late teens or early twenties that wasn't even wearing a mask. "Why aren't you wearing a mask?" He checked to make sure his domino mask was still in place on his Ringmaster inspired outfit.

"Are you planning on screwing me over Francis?" Myst asked as he studied the brown haired young man 'casually' leaning up against the old bar where he'd told them to meet him. "Noelle's powers are dangerous, it's in everyone's best interest to help."

"What makes you think you can help?" Trickster demanded, doing his best not to react to Myst using his name.

Myst gestured towards Amy and Leet who were standing next to him, dressed as masked magic users in white and black cloaks. "I have a cape in my employ that can suppress powers and both Panacea and Leet owe me favors. I have zero doubts I can solve your problems, which a precog has said would improve my future outlook. It benefits me to help you, so I have no problem doing so.”

Trickster nodded thoughtfully. Covering his own ass was something he could understand and agree with. "Fine, how does this work?"

"My friend suppresses Noelle's powers and Amy fixes her body and possibly her powers, if nothing else, it should last long enough to find a more permanent solution," Myst explained.

"And Leet?" Ballistic asked.

"You want to get home, he can do anything once and he's never built a portal device to get to Earth Aleph," Myst replied. “The fact that we have regular contact with it means we don’t even have to worry about opening the portal to the wrong world.”

"How do you know about that?!" Cody demanded.

"Precogs," Myst lied, fairly sure he wouldn't believe the truth. 

"What do you want?" Sundancer asked. "I can accept that you'd help with Noelle but getting us home for free seems a bit too generous."

"Generous?” Myst asked with a snicker. “I’m not being generous. You lot will cause chaos and disrupt my operations if left to your own devices, costing me millions. I’m not helping you because I like you, I am helping you to remove a rival. I fix your problems and send you home and I can continue business as usual.” 

"Most people we've run into would want money," Ballistic said, surprised that the cape was being reasonable even if his logic made sense.

"If you want to repay the favor, stay on your own Earth and don’t interfere in mine." Myst transferred in one of the Hatchet Faces, who’d had his scars removed and grown a full head of red hair. "Do you want to start with Jess's back or Noelle?"

"Her back," Amy said, glancing at the large ape-like creature as it vanished. "Fixing Noelle is probably going to be at least moderately annoying."

"How long will it take to build the portal device?" Trickster asked as Oliver wheeled Jess into the room from the kitchen.

"I'm already done, it's basically a scaled up version of the device they use to exchange data with Earth Aleph," Leet explained as he opened his suitcase and started setting up the portal device. 'Hopefully this doesn't rip another hole in the world they have to fill with concrete.'

"Nice," Ballistic said, relaxing as it seemed like everything was actually going to work out for once.

Myst kept part of his attention on Cody while Amy walked over to work on Genesis, mostly because he trusted him the least as he'd been a lazy entitled shit even before getting powers or at least that was how he remembered him from the story. “We’ve had everything planned out a week in advance,” Myst said, “precogs are handy that way. I figure it will take less than an hour to get you all home healthy and out of my hair. Now, I know Noelle is going to want her powers removed for obvious reasons, but do any of you want yours removed as well?”

"No, we're good but if you have a way to stabilize my power, I'd take it," Oliver said as he glanced between Leet and the stranger.

"I can fully neutralize your power, but not halfway and your continually shifting looks are part of that,” Myst replied. “The best I can do is offer a ring that will allow you to intentionally change your looks, so you can change it to what you want each day. Your power will still seek to change it, but it works slowly while the ring takes about three seconds.”

“Really?” Oliver asked, surprised. 

“Really,” Myst said, tossing him a ring. 

“This is tinkertech?” Oliver asked as he looked the ring over and couldn’t see anything special about the plain gold band.

“Think of it as solid state electronics,” Myst suggested, “no moving parts, so there’s nothing to break down or require maintenance. Just don’t break the ring and you’ll be fine.”

Oliver slid the ring on his finger and concentrated, his features shifting into a rather unremarkable young man. “Did it work?” he asked hopefully.

“Yeah, you look exactly like yourself, if a bit better,” Sundancer said. “Your ears don’t stick out the way they used to.”

“My ears never stuck out,” Oliver defended himself, making the rest of the Travelers laugh. “Come on, my ears weren’t that bad.”

“They were,” Francis assured him, “but they aren’t now.”

"Like Dumbo," Cody added with a smirk.

“Remember that time we all got drunk and tried to see if you could fly?” Francis asked.

“I thought we were just trying to land in the pool from the roof,” Oliver said.

“No we were betting you’d catch air with those puppies,” Genesis called out, bouncing in her chair in excitement. “I can move my feet!”

“Yes, now let's strengthen those under developed muscles and possibly do something about your hearing,” Panacea said.

“What’s wrong with my hearing?” Genesis asked.

“Probably listened to too many loud movies or concerts,” Panacea replied, “I see it a lot in people. Thankfully it’s an easy fix, much like the one for eye strain from staring at computer screens too often.”

“Okay, ouch,” Oliver said, “I thought you guys were joking and meh because it’s no longer my problem.” He clutched his hand to his chest and rubbed the ring. “My precious,” he joked with a grin.

“You’ll all need a clean bill of health so we know we aren’t sending any plague carriers to Earth Aleph,” Myst said, “because someone will eventually realize I’ve done this and I’ll need to prove I did it safely.”

“That takes five seconds,” Panacea said, “at least for the people, any luggage they carry will have to be checked for virus samples etc…”

“We travel light,” Francis assured them, “we don’t have a lot of belongings to go through. We basically carry two changes of clothes, laptops, and cash.”

“I’ll check their belongings,” Leet volunteered, “it’ll only take a few seconds as I send them through.” He pulled an improved and miniaturized version of his scanner from the pocket on his coveralls.

“No fruit or seeds,” Myst reminded him. “Man, I feel like a border guard now.”

Sundancer snickered.

“I can exchange your cash for gold if you want, so you don’t get charged with counterfeiting,” Myst offered.

“Still sounds generous,” Francis said with a frown.

“If you guys get arrested I can be legally charged as an accessory by the PRT on this end,” Myst said, “I’m just covering all the bases, besides I doubt you have all that much.”

“We have a quarter of a million,” Cody said smugly. “We figured Noelle’s cure was going to be pricey.”

“Like I said, not much,” Myst smirked.